Newtown parade reflects healing

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — Ten thousand decisions go into creating a big, boisterous parade. No one knows that better than Robin Buchanan, who for years has juggled the lineup at the Labor Day parade that has jubilantly closed out every Newtown summer for more than five decades.

But never before had this happened: Calls and emails from regulars, folks who always marched, concerned about the most basic decision of all.

“Are you going to have a parade,” they asked her, “this year?”

This year.

Meaning: After the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, after the eulogies for 20 first-graders and six educators, amid the drumbeat of news stories across the country and hushed conversations around town, all adding up — still — to incomprehension.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday tapped a veteran Vatican diplomat to be his top aide, replacing the Holy See’s secretary of state who in recent years increasingly became a divisive figure in a church hierarchy mired in embarrassing scandal and financial probes.

The Vatican announced that Archbishop Pietro Parolin, 58, an Italian and former deputy foreign mi